CANCELLATION OL THE MOON-LANDING PROGRAMME

Zond 8 marked the end of the around-the-moon programme. The landing pro­gramme, dependent on the testing of the N-l, still continued. Chief Designer Vasili Mishin continued to enjoy support at the highest level in the Politburo, especially from Andrei Kirilenko. Testing of the N-l continued with a view to its completing its original purpose, or, alternatively, to carry large payloads to low-Earth orbit. After the two disasters of 1969, KORD was redesigned. The system could no longer be closed down entirely during the first 50 sec of flight. A fire-extinguishing system, using freon gas, was installed. The NK-33 engines were tested more rigorously, with new systems for quality control. Filters were installed to stop foreign objects from getting into the engines. Cabling was better protected against fire. Pumps were improved. The launchpads were rebuilt.

The third N-l was ready to fly again two years later. Unlike its two predecessors, it was not aimed at the moon, carrying only a dummy LK and LOK (and a dummy escape tower). Launching took place at night on 27 June 1971, while, incidentally, three cosmonauts were aloft in the Salyut space station (at one stage, it had been planned for them to look out for the launch). From as early as 7.5 sec, the vehicle began to roll about its axis. By 40 sec, the small vernier engines lost the ability to counteract the roll and at 45 sec the rocket began to break up, the payload falling off first. At 51 sec, the redesigned KORD system shut the lower rocket stage down. The stages separated and the rocket crashed to destruction, the first stage gouging out a 30 m crater 20 km downrange. The escape tower was a mockup and did not fire. Ironically, the failure of the rocket’s roll control system was due to the fact that all the engines of the N-l were actually firing together at take-off at the same time for the first time, none having been shut down by KORD. The thrust of the 30 engines, all firing together, created a strong roll effect that the vernier engines had been insufficiently strong to counter. Had all the engines fired properly at launch on the first or second take-offs, this would have been apparent then. Or, more to the point, the problem might have been identified if there had been proper ground-testing.

The failure of the third N-l took place at a time when the Americans were making rapid progress in lunar exploration. In February l97l, the Americans had returned to the moon with Apollo l4 and were about to proceed to the three-day surface missions of Apollos l5, l6 and l7. In July l97l, the Americans landed at Mount Hadley and spent three days there, driving a rover around the mountains and to the edge of a rille. The old Nl-L3 plan, putting only one cosmonaut on the lunar surface for only a few hours, looked ever more inadequate. The old Nl-L3 plan was finally terminated in August l97l, at the time the third LK was successfully being put through its paces as Cosmos 434. The termination of the plan permitted remaining LK and LOK hard­ware to be flown, presumably on N-l testflights.